Category Archives: Mommy

“And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” – Luke 11:9-13 KJV

I made the mistake of telling my husband that I needed God to strike me with inspiration when I was trying to write this post for Ask God Today’s email series on Love.

It’s not that the Bible is short on topics about love. On the contrary there are a lot of great verses that refer to all kinds of love. My problem was I had to choose only one.

Then inspiration hit me like a rock and I grabbed these props and gave them to Elisabeth at our kitchen table.

“When your children are hungry, what do you give them?”

I then compare our love for our children to God’s love as our Heavenly Father.

Little did I know that Elisabeth wasn’t done giving me illustrations for this post.

Yes, she threw up in my room as I was writing this article and after I cleaned it all up her illness gave me more to write about.

Isn’t that how it goes sometimes?

“How many times has my Heavenly Father cleaned up the messes I’ve made? I may have to live with some of the stench, but as I draw closer to Him, I become healthier.

Elisabeth fell asleep in my arms. As I held her close I thought about how comforting it is to know that God is right there holding me close whenever I’m not well. He knows exactly what medicine we need.”

So that is how inspiration strikes this writing mom sometimes. As I say in this post, “I’m not a perfect parent. I make mistakes.”

But I’m just glad that God IS perfect. He knows exactly what I need when I need it.

The other day I had a blog idea in my mind and I was planning to write about today. I thought since I didn’t know what the Five Minute Friday‘s word would be today I’d write what was going on in my head and only link up if there word happened to go along with it.

Well, guess what… It did.

As soon as I saw today’s word I decided I was going to go ahead and write those thoughts down in Five Minutes today.

Nobody likes pain. Life is not always comfortable though. It’s during those times that we hurt that we can feel comfort the most. If you fall down and skin your knee that is the time you want your mother’s hug the most. It’s amazing how just a simple thing can make a child feel all better.

It’s the same when we read our Bibles or hear a really gut wrenching sermon. Our lives may be messed up in an area. It hurts to hear we’ve been messing up. But that’s when we can feel our Savior’s love for us all the more. The comfort that He can give a fallen child is far above all the pain we endure having the medicine applied.

After the medicine is applied to our swollen knee all we need is a parent’s hug. After we allow God to apply the medicine of His word on our hearts, that’s when we can feel his arms wrapped around us.

Stop

Have you ever had a time where you felt comforted after you were hurt? Please share with me in the comments below.

If you are following me via email, I recently found out that there wasn’t a simple link to click on to leave comments. But now there is you can click on the word “comments” and it will take you to the post. Let me know if there is anything else that could use tweaking in my email updates by just simply replying to any email. Thanks for following my posts!

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Our older 3 children all have pen pals that they write to every month.

The other day they were writing letters, while their younger brothers were pretending to write letters as well.

My 5 year old wrote this letter. He asked me to read it. So I made up what it said.

“Dear Mommy, you are the best mommy in the whole wide world…”

He started erasing it, “No! No! No! Mommy you need to learn how to read!”

Ha! I laughed but informed him that the real problem was that he needed to learn how to write.

My husband and I were realizing the other day that we have kids in just about every stage. Here in about 6 years we probably will have kids in every stage as our eldest will be old enough to move out on his own.

Wow! Where has the time gone?

Meanwhile we’re continuing to learn.

This past week we’ve dealt with everything from teething, potty training, to puberty.

My solution to all these issues? Give the kids more work!

Yes. They might not like me now but I hope they will appreciate all this work when they’re grown with families of their own.

For now I’ll just keep on praying for each one of them and dream of the days when we start having grandchildren come over. My husband and I can’t hardly wait until we can spoil those grandchildren real good and send them home. I’m beginning to understand this spoil the grandkids thing.

How has your week been? Do you have days that you struggle with the new stages your children are going through? Feel free to share with me in the comments.

I have had a lot on my plate lately and haven’t had much time at all to post on all the social media sites that I normally frequent. After all I do have a Rock Solid Family to build.

This blog will be the place I’ll be doing the most writing and I’ll do my best to answer your comments here on my blog as soon as I possibly can.

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Every year on January 1 our karate class practices a Japanese tradition called Hatsu Geiko. We all gather at our dojo to perform 1000 kicks together. After every 100 kicks our Sensei would ask someone randomly to tell what motivates them to keep on going to karate class even when they know it’s going to be hard.

I just knew she might call on me if I didn’t think of something to say. So the whole time I was kicking I was writing my answer in my head.

My husband and I have been married 16 years. When we first met we were skinny little things. My husband had taken various martial arts off and on before we had met.

December 2009 (Left to Right): Jonathan, Joshua, Ruth, and Hannah

Then married life hit us along with good cooking and bad eating habits. I don’t have very many pictures of those days. When we were expecting our second child, my husband would come home from work and just lay down on the floor and let our almost two year old son just crawl over him. That was all the energy he had back then. He knew he needed exercise. So he joined a Tae Kwon Do class. I just watched.

Our karate class in January 2011

Then we were faced with a move a few months later after our daughter was born. We didn’t join any courses for a while but then my husband wanted to find another class in our new location. He found one that met at a YMCA and we both joined that time. My parents watched the babies while we went one night a week to karate classes.

Mommy and Elijah during Haitsu Geiko January 2011. He was about 10 months old.

We moved again! This time we didn’t find another dojo for a while. I started gaining a lot of weight. I wanted to have a 3rd child but it didn’t seem to be the Lord’s will.

I was depressed! I tired easily. My back and neck both hurt.

After about a year of being depressed, I decided to see a doctor. According to his diagnosis there was nothing wrong with me.

I gave up.

Most of the time giving up is a bad thing. This time it was good.

Our Family Summer of 2010

I quit worrying about not having another child. I decided I would just be happy with the two I already had.

I joined a local exercise place for women. I started losing weight. My husband decided he wanted to lose weight as well and found another martial arts school.I could have just let my husband do Martial Arts while I continued my own routine. However I had read in a Marriage book once that it was good for wives to participate in their husband’s hobbies. I decided to join him in Tae Kwon Do.

Then came Baby #3.

Then we moved!

Yes, we moved again. This time my husband had a very physically challenging job so he didn’t really need the extra exercise. I was expecting our 4th baby and decided walking up the stairs where we lived was exercise enough.

Our Family March 2012 just before Elisabeth was born.

Then we moved again! This time we moved to our present location. We lived here for about a year and a half before I decided we needed to find another place to exercise.

It was about the time Hannah was 4 and wanted to be a football player. I knew she needed a sport and the rest of the family could use some exercise as well. I talked to my husband and he started calling martial arts classes in nearby towns. That’s when we found our present karate family.

Now what keeps me going to karate class?

We had our family picture taken with Nobuaki Kanazawa in June 2012 at a SKIF seminar held in our dojo.

I’m not exactly what people imagine in a martial artist. You look at me and you see a mother with a whole bunch of kids! I’m not exactly the karate kid. I didn’t even do sports in school.

I do this because I believe that it’s not only good for me to join my husband in the hobbies he enjoys. It’s also good for us to teach our children that we can do things as a family. If mom is sitting on the sidelines or going shopping while the rest of the family works out what message am I giving my kids?

I think that we mothers need to have fun with our families. Even as I get older I can show my kids that I can still have fun.

How about your family? Is there a hobby that y’all enjoy doing altogether as a family? If not can you think of something you can start doing together?

Please share your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear what your family does together for fun.

I am setting my goals on a monthly basis this year. I have a few goals for the year but mostly I’m going to reevaluate monthly. So for the month of January I’ll be trying to post two blog posts a week. I also plan to write one devotional a week. I also plan to write one short story book.

And that’s just my writing goals. I have plenty of family goals for this year as well. Including keeping the dishes out of the sink. Laundry is a whole nother matter. I think I can. I think I can.

Sign up for my free email updates in order not to miss anything. Happy New Year!

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We spent a whole week in our new home. Scott’s back gave out on him while he was at work the week before last week. After seeing the chiropractor he took Friday, August 8, off and then after an achy weekend he called his boss and decided to take the rest of that next week to rest his back.

Monday night, last week, Hannah suffered a little bit of homesickness. We had rocked her world by not going back to our old house. She wanted her blanket that Mamaw made. My explaining that we would get it when we went back the next week didn’t help any. She was better the next morning, but still wanted her blanket. I did find another blanket that was hers when she was a baby.

I went to the store Tuesday, while Scott stayed home with the kids. He had asked them what they all wanted to be when they grew up. Joshua wants to be a zoo keeper, Ruth wants to be a veterinarian, and Hannah wants to be a Mommy with milk, and to eat chocolate cheesecake when she grows up. Whenever Daddy, gives me something that they do not get, he says it’s becuse I’m mommy. So Hannah has decided that being a Mommy is the best job in the world.

She was watching me give Jonathan a bath and she asked if she could help wash his hair. He was very happy and I did not want him to get shampoo or water in his face so I told not right now. So she watched a little while then she asked me, “When I get to be a mommy, will I get to give Jonathan a bath?” I explained that when she gets to be a mommy she’ll get to give her own babies baths. She was quite concerned and asked, “So I won’t get to give Jonathan a bath?!” I tried to explain that Jonathan will be big by then and would be giving himself baths. She can’t imagine him being grown, she thinks he will always be a baby. After finally conceding that argument she asked me, “Well will you get to give my babies baths.” I told her that that was another nice thing. When she gets to be a mommy, I will get to be a grandma and sometimes I will get to help give her babies baths. Another new concept.

“So will I get to be a grandma?” she asked. I explained that she had to be a mommy before she was a grandma. She then decided she would rather be a grandma and give Jonathan baths. As I’ve told the kids many times, sometimes you just can’t win an argument with a 3 year old.

I feel like I must be doing something right for Hannah to want to be a Mommy when she grows up. Of course it may just be all the special “privileges” she thinks mommies have. Of course she does not “see” the work. Right now, washing dishes in a sink looks like playing in a sink full of bubbles. Vaccuuming is fun. She especially wants to be allowed to mop, or rather sling water all over the kitchen floor with a big wet wig. I asked why their was a mop in the girls bedroom, they had been pretending that it was hair. I asked that when they were through pretending that they return the mop back to it’s rightful spot. Yep, being a mom, is a lot of fun. There is never a dull moment.

I’ve been working on my lesson plans for the upcoming school year. I’ll actually be starting the kids classes Sept. 1. I wanted one extra week after we move to get organized, before we actually start our lessons. I have a lot of work to do this week. We will be moving the last of our stuff.

Scott plans to substitute teach, while I am homeschooling the kids. Things should go well. I’m pretty sure he will get enough calls to supplement the income the church will be giving us and to pay the bills. We really don’t need much. We are pretty good at pinching pennies sometimes. We may have to pinch quite a few, but you can actually live pretty well on very little. I’m just glad that we were able to have enough money this summer to get some curriculum and a copy machine for homeschooling. That will help me a lot this year. We’re pretty much all set.

We haven’t got a phone line, nor internet access set up at the new house yet. I will get that sorted out as soon as possible. I may have to blog from the library a few times. I’ll try not to get too behind on my blogs.